Apple App accelerator turns a year old, teaches success to developers young and old

Also read: Apple’s first App Accelerator starts in Bengaluru, Phil Schiller says will boost developer community

The impact of the App Accelerator on the developer community in India has already been significant. This unique initiative, which is free and open to all developers, has been received well. The developers we spoke to were clearly impressed at the way Apple’s in-house experts helped them improve the user interface, debug errors, localise apps and offered design feedback.

Another developer using the facility, Ashwat Prasanna, is all of 10 years old.

To ensure global standards for the apps coming out of India, the accelerator has focused on two key technologies – Swift, Apple’s language for building iOS apps, and its augmented reality developer kit, ARKit. The latter seems to be finding quite a few fans among developers in India.

One app that stood out was Froggipedia which lets students learn the anatomy of frogs on the iPad without having to dissect the real amphibian. “We started two months back on the app [Froggipedia] with the help of Apple App Accelerator team. They helped us design the beautiful and intuitive user interface, enable seamless integration of ARKit, ensure the pressure sensitivity of Apple Pencil was put to good use and how to do the unity development,” Capt KJS Brar, CEO, Designmate, told indianexpress.com. The app created by three-decade-old Ahmedabad-based animation house Designmate was first demonstrated at Apple’s education-focused event in Chicago last month.

The impact of the App Accelerator on the developer community in India has already been significant.

Another developer using the facility, Ashwat Prasanna, is all of 10 years old. His conversion app Quickvert helps convert scientific units from metric to imperial. Prasanna said the accelerator helped him learn the Swift programming language, cleaning up his coding skills, and took care of the user interface. “I started working on the app in December 2017 and it took me a week to develop the app. On the first day I fixed up the UI and most of the coding happened and throughout the next six days I created the structure of the app. And on the eighth day I submitted the app,” he explained. The boy is already working on a new app called Circuitdesks, again with help from the accelerator.

Disclaimer: The author visited the App Accelerator on the invite of Apple India